The Principles of Qualitative Research

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The Principles of Qualitative Research

• Hugh Willmott
• Research Professor in Organizational Analysis
• Cardiff Business School
• Home Page http//dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/clos
  e/hr22/hcwhome

FOR ALL COURSE MATERIALS, VISIT
http//dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/hr22/Princ
iples of Qualitative Research
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Outline of Session

• Module Outline
• Introductions me and you
• Defining Qualitative Research
• Challenges of Qualitative Research

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Module Outline Aims and Themes
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Module Aims

• Theoretical and practical introduction to key
  issues involved in the production, analysis and
  presentation of qualitative data
• specific reference to business and
  management-related fields of study.
• Develop an understanding of the main issues
  encountered in the process of designing and
  pursuing qualitative analysis
• exclusive focus on non-quantitative data
• or occurring within the context of numerical data
  construction and interpretation

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Module Themes

• Theoretical traditions
• - range of different approaches, perspectives,
  paradigms
• Design Issues
• - alternative principles and strategies
• Data collection/construction
• - diverse ways of collecting/constructing data
• Claims and issues in social research
• - concerns about reliability, validity,
  generalizability, reflexivity, ethics, etc.

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Introductions Me and You
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HWs Background and Interest

• Management Sciences graduate
• Relevance of social theory (across the social
  sciences) for study of management and
  organization
• Appeal of critical social theory (purpose is to
  change the world, not just to understand it)
• diverse forms of critical social theory
• emancipatory intent
• Critical Management Studies (CMS)

• Involvement in numerous qualitative studies
• For example
• Management of single homeless people field
  study
• Management control (x 2) case studies
• Strategy case studies
• Accounting Regulation field study
• Changing Employment Relations (case studies)
• plus supervision of PhD students (PR, new media,
  business education, strategy, ethics, new
  manufacturing practices, mutuals,etc)

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Research in Action Getting to Know Eachother
Exercise
You may take notes

• Topic Stance/Approach - Background
• Topic of research what is it and how did it
  emerge?
• Intended approach/perspective for undertaking the
  research what is it and why this choice?
• Background academic and anything else
  considered relevant
• What issues have emerged, and what has been
  learned about the presentation of research?

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What Issues Arise?

• Focus and Scope
• Defensibility of perspective
• Preparedness
• Ethics of research how deep to probe?
• Politics of research hidden agendas? judgments?
• Implicit assumptions and understandings re.
  meaning of research framing of questions and
  answers
• Management of identity as interviewer and
  interviewee process of negotiation
• Selective construction and (re)presentation of
  research findings (see above!)

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What Issues Arise? (2) An Example

• A researcher is called in by a top manager to
  study the effects of an innovative change
  programme that has recently been implemented, at
  great cost and with much publicity, at the
  managers insistence. The research shows that the
  programme has had little or no effect. The
  manager angrily instructs the researcher not to
  publish the study even though the researcher had
  said at the start that freedom to publish was a
  condition of doing the work. A.B.Thomas (2004),
  Research Skills for Management Studies, London
  Routledge, p. 89

What are some of the issues here
re. Ethics?Politics?Assumptions and
Understandings?Identities?Findings?
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Defining Qualitative Research
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What is Qualitative Research? (1)
B. Gephart (2004), Qualitative Research and the
Academy of Management Journal, Academy of
Management Journal Vol. 47, No. 4, 454462.

• Health Warning. There is no single definitive
  answer to this question (just take a look at the
  different representations of qualitative research
  to be found in the numerous textbooks on the
  subject!). Here is one recently provided in a
  specialist article on the subject published in
  the top management journal, Academy of Management
  Journal)
• 1. Qualitative research is multimethod research
  that uses an interpretive, naturalistic approach
  to its subject matter (Denzin Lincoln, 1994).
  Qualitative research emphasizes qualities of
  entitiesthe processes and meanings that occur
  naturally (Denzin Lincoln, 2000 8).
• 2. Qualitative research often studies phenomena
  in the environments in which they naturally occur
  and uses social actors meanings to understand
  the phenomena (Denzin Lincoln, 1994 2).

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What is Qualitative Research? (2)
B. Gephart (2004), Qualitative Research and the
Academy of Management Journal, Academy of
Management Journal Vol. 47, No. 4, 454462.

• 3.Qualitative research addresses questions about
  how social experience is created and given
  meaning and produces representations of the world
  that make the world visible (Denzin Lincoln,
  2000 3). Beyond this, qualitative research is
  particularly difficult to pin down because of
  its flexibility and emergent character (Van
  Maanen,1998 xi).
• 4. Qualitative research is often designed at the
  same time it is being done it requires highly
  contextualized individual judgments (Van Maanen,
  1998 xi) moreover, it is open to unanticipated
  events, and it offers holistic depictions of
  realities that cannot be reduced to a few
  variables (pp 454-55)

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Key Points
Qualitative research aims to produce rounded and
contextual understandings on the basis of rich,
nuanced and detailed data (J. Mason (2005),
Qualitative Researching, London Sage, p. 3)

• Multiple methods (observation, interviewing,
  documentation, etc)
• Focus upon naturally occurring meanings
• Attention to actors frame of reference or
  sense-making
• Emergent in direction and interpretation
• Continuous adjustment iterative
• Holistic (opposite of fragmented or highly
  selective)
• Continuous exercise of judgment (craft)

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Research as Craft

• Research is a craft. Like other crafts
  activities are not analyzableUnexpected problems
  appear. Procedures are not available to describe
  each aspect of research activityThrough practice
  one learns to ask research questions, how to
  conduct research projects, and what to strive for
  when writing a research paper
• R. Daft, Learning the Craft of Organizational
  Research, Academy of Management Review, 8, pp
  539-46 cited in A. Thomas (2004), Research Skills
  for Management Students, London Routledge, p. 4

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Challenges of Qualitative Research
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Challenges of Qualitative Research

• Foregrounding the significance of context and
  particularity
• Contesting outsiders accounts of the inside
• Resistance to pressures for reduction to set of
  protocols
• Development of theoretical generalization
• Formation of critical yet productive and
  creative ways of thinking and doing (J. Mason
  (2005), Qualitative Researching, London Sage, p.
  4)
• Developing a type of rigor and systematicity that
  is appropriate to qualitative research. Key
  importance of reflexivity - confronting and
  often challenging your own assumptions, and
  recognising the extent to which your thoughts,
  action and decisions shape how you research and
  what you see (Mason, ibid, p. 5).

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A View of What Qualitative Research Should Be..
(Mason, 2005, p. 7-8)

• Systematic and rigorous but not rigid
• Accountable endeavour to make it amenable to
  assessment
• Strategically conducted thoughtfully planned
  but attentive to changing circumstances
• Reflexive recurrently ask difficult questions
  re. role of researcher in research process (a
  researcher cannot be neutral, objective or
  detached, from the knowledge and evidence they
  are generating)
• Provide explanations or arguments, not mere
  descriptions that appear to be factual
  (qualitative researchers should recognize
  that they are producing arguments, and should
  be explicit about the logic on which these are
  based, my emphasis)
• Recognise that the distinction between
  qualitative and quantitative is not
  clear-cut.
• Recognise that research is a moral practice
  involving numerous moral and political dilemmas

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Recurrent Issues

• The meaning of qualitative research
• where are its boundaries? what are its methods?
  what makes it research?
• The standing of qualitative research
• is it inferior (anecdotal, illustrative) or
  preparatory to quantitative research?
• should qualitative research comply with the
  protocols and by judged by the criteria
  attributed to quantitative research re. validity,
  etc?
• The ethics of qualitative research
• is qualitative research unacceptably intrusive?
  What accountability is there of the researcher to
  the researched?
• The conduct of qualitative research
• what stance/ approach to take? Which methods to
  use? What skills to develop? What justifications
  to invoke?

Are the answers given to such questions based
primarily upon the capacity of groups of
academics to control material (e.g. grants) and
symbolic (e.g. peer evaluations) resources
sufficient to develop and sustain their
particular views and associated practices? How
would you read Gepharts claim that Qualitative
research often advances the field by providing
unique, memorable, socially important and
theoretically meaningful contributions to
scholarly discourse and organizational life (p.
461)
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Final Thought

• Topic and Stance/ Approach
• Safe but dull
• or
• Risky but personally satisfying?

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Additional Recommended Reading

• P. Cryer (1996), The Research Students Guide to
  Success, Buckingham Open University Press
• Homan, R. (1991), The Ethics of Social Research,
  London Longman
• P. Jeffcutt and A. B.Thomas (1991),
  Understanding Supervisory Relationships in N.C.
  Smith and P. Dainty (eds), The Management
  Research Handbook, London Routledge
• M. Tayeb (1991), Inside Story The Sufferings
  and Joys of Doctoral Research, Organization
  Studies, 12 301-4
• Watson, T.J. (1994), Managing, Crafting and
  Researching Words, Skill and Imagination in
  Shaping Management Research, British Journal of
  Management, Special Issue, 5 77-87